Chapter 20 ivory ball

Every once in a while, I always go to the Forbidden City Museum in Waishuangxi. Sometimes I don’t necessarily see the treasures left by our ancestors, but I just want to go there and breathe some ancient fragrance. There are so many treasures in the Palace Museum that no matter how good your eyesight is, you can’t guarantee that you have seen all the treasures.Therefore, in the Forbidden City, walking is often like walking a horse on the plains. You only know that there are turbulent beauty and endless thoughts everywhere. Sometimes the horse walks too fast, and you can’t remember anything after you come back. Saw it in a dream.

Breathing in the Forbidden City is like walking into a garden full of flowers in spring. There are many flowers we have never seen before, and there are many flowers that we have seen but do not know the name, but we breathe deeply, all kinds of flowers The fragrance suddenly merged into a river, which flowed from a very distant time and space, through history, through geography, and flowed into our hearts.Our heart is now a lake, which can contain hundreds of rivers and countless great artistic souls in history. Every great artist is the opening of a flower. After entering the Forbidden City, we may not see the flower, because some flowers are very small and inconspicuous at all, while some flowers are very large even in the garden. Small, that feeling is really beautiful. In the garden, a small walnut boat has the same lofty status as a picture of the Yangtze River, making future generations bow their heads in front of the window.

Sometimes I have a whim, so many treasures of Chinese humanities and art, if we can penetrate the window and touch those exquisite utensils and albums, I don’t know what kind of emotion will surge in my heart, but it’s a pity that I can’t touch them , Just like you can't climb flowers and trees in the garden, even if you are touched by the extreme, you can only appreciate and sigh quietly.And because I can't touch it, I can't own it, I feel its sublime even more. Hands cannot touch, but hearts can.Several times, I almost heard the voice close to my heart. When I got close to a rare treasure, it was equivalent to hearing the footsteps of an artist, and through his footsteps, I experienced China's thousands of miles of rivers and mountains. Thousands of generations.Each piece of work was a window at that time. When the carefully carved window was pushed open, the whole mountain and water rushed into the window uncontrollably; Even wine is no match for the rush of wind in that landscape.

Some of my friends who work in the Forbidden City sometimes envy their work, imagining that they can swim in a large piece of classical fragrance every day, and they don’t know how happy it is.What's more, everything has an allusion that makes people think deeply. Even if you don't know the allusion, I think an exquisite work is suitable for association, so that the mind can pass through the gap of history.Take the "Jade Jade Cabbage" and "White Jade Bitter Gourd" that most people are most familiar with. The first time I saw these two works was like walking into a palace in the Qing Dynasty. Knowing whose works, I silently salute the craftsmen who created them.

The jade of green jade cabbage was originally impure green jade, which has no value like pure jade. Because the craftsman carved the green part into the vegetable tip, the white jade into the vegetable stem, and carved two lifelike katydids on the vegetable tip. , so that the original impure jade, due to the ingenuity of the creator, is even worth a thousand times more than pure jade, not to mention white jade and bitter gourd.Even a piece of ancient Chinese jade, without ingenuity, cannot compare to the value of these two works. There are many works in the Forbidden City like this, not to mention jade wares, there are many bronze wares, iron wares, and even the simplest pottery wares. immortal.But my friends in the Forbidden City are still dissatisfied. They often feel that after the Eight-Power Allied Forces, too many Chinese treasures flowed into foreign countries and became rare treasures in foreign museums. , We always wish China to belong to China, this is probably an unavoidable emotion, it is said that the French have repeatedly made requests to the British government, hoping that Britain will return the French furniture left in the Queen's Palace, the reason is very simple: these historical The long-standing French furniture is only furniture in England, but it is a national treasure in France. There is no reason for Britain not to return it. This indifferent attitude has made many proud Frenchmen shed tears.

China's flow to all parts of the world is not limited to furniture, so every time I see museums in various countries open Chinese pavilions, exhibiting treasures that are not even in China, although I don't cry, I feel extremely melancholy, like some dripping water. of blood.It's a pity that we don't even have a fight, we can only listen to the voices of yellow-haired and blue-eyed people in foreign museums.Once I saw many exquisite Tang Sancai in the Seattle Art Museum, which made my footsteps float at the entrance of the art museum, and I almost forgot how to walk properly.

Recently, when I was in the Forbidden City, I stood and admired several ivory balls carefully. Those ivory balls of different sizes, even through the window, I can still see balls within the balls, surrounded by layers, the smallest balls even It can be pushed to infinity. In fact, ivory balls are only the most common treasures in the Forbidden City, and many of them have been exported to foreign countries, but this does not detract from its value at all-I am afraid that a craftsman will not be able to carve a few ivory balls in his life! At that moment, I felt that the treasures of Chinese art and the brilliance of culture were really like ivory balls, developed layer by layer, and finally became a perfectly round entity.

We have seen many peak works of foreign culture and art, and they have shocked our hearts, but their significance is not comparable to that of an ivory ball, because the ivory ball is only a small symbol of the soul of Chinese art. We have the same blood, and the creators have the same culture, the same language, and even the same historical and geographical background as us. I think the most moving thing about the Forbidden City is that it makes us feel that we are not isolated in the long history of the vast land, and that there are many great souls with the same blood as us accompanying us and looking around us.When I think about it this way, I am no longer so envious of my friends who work in the Forbidden City, because we are not researchers, but appreciators. From a large perspective, the Forbidden City is just a river of blood, a garden that can breathe, or just a kind of echo emotions.

People who can feel the beauty of mountains don’t have to live in the mountains, people who can appreciate the beauty of water don’t have to live by the water, people who can appreciate ivory balls don’t have to hold ivory balls, as long as there are mountains, water and ivory in their hearts The ball is enough, because the most beautiful things are always in the heart, not in the eyes. —January 5, 1983